Video Songwriting Tutorial

Larry Seyer, who has been writing songs for along time, decided to document his process of putting a song together by video recording himself in what he calls "Song Birth". Worth checking out...

Lyrics: Something Else

I've been working on three new songs in the last few days, one of which I just recorded a quick demo of and is of the poetic abstract sort. This second one is more of a character study / story about a girl returning home to her parent's house after many years when she left to the big city to pursue her dreams. Not exactly the most original story, I realize, but certainly one that is easy to relate to.

I've just been working with the lyrics somewhat and here is the current draft:

SOMETHING ELSE

Walking down that old dirt road
To the house in the woods
You remember from so long ago
Where you grew up fast and full of soul

Traveling home is a simpler thing
When your hands are empty, when all you bring are
Memories to the door
Though long forgotten everyone still adores you
In spite of what you put them through

You think you might say something
About a friend who lived near by
As you help them put their dishes on the shelf

Now fences are for mending
Not to keep the world outside
When you’ve left it all behind for something else

It’s nineteen years ago today
That you made your mind up and said OK
The city is the place to be
it’s everyone you want to be with
When you’re famous everyone will know why
You left, will they understand you best?

You think you might say something
About a friend who lived near by
As you help them put their dishes on the shelf

Now fences are for mending
Not to keep the world outside
When you’ve left it all behind for something else
For something else
When you’ve left it all behind for something else


July 16, 2008

Best of the Rest: Andrea Stolpe

I find Andrea's Stolpe's Career Songwriter blog is one of the most useful songwriting blogs. In this blog she offers up some ideas on how to avoid getting into ruts by subtly challenging some of your normal habits.

Literature and Songwriting

During the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, singer-songwriter Joe Henry participated in a panel on the connection between music and the written word. In this piece for the LA times, Joe elaborates on this question and writes about how literature has helped shape his songs.

Interview with John Braheny

John Braheny's Comprehensive book The Craft and Business of Songwriting is one of the most useful business oriented songwriting books on my bookshelf. Check out this YouTube interview with John to hear more of what he has to say.

Recording the Revision Process: Baby

I wrote a song called "Baby" over the weekend and I thought it might be insightful to record the revision process I went through between the song initially coming out and the final draft, which you can listen to a demo of here for reference.

Here are the lyrics as recorded:

Baby, I think I’m tired
Baby, I think I’ve tried to say that
I can’t stop thinking about
I can’t stop thinking about you

Baby, is it too late?
Baby, am I made to break?
Your heart all over again
It’s so hard just staying a friend

So don’t think it’s true baby
That everything is maybe in my heart

Is it wrong to think I’m wise
I’ve lived too long to be surprised that
I can’t stop hoping now
I can’t stop the way that I’m the way that I’m
Running away from the things that I can’t change
The way I’m trying to feel about half my age

So don’t think it’s true baby
That everything is maybe in my heart
Everything is maybe in my heart

and the form is intro-V1-V2-Riff-Refrain-Riff-V3-extension-Refrain-RepeatedLine-Riff-Outro

In the first verse, I made the following changes:
- 2nd line "tried to tell you" -> changed to "tried to say that" which seemed stronger
- originally the 3rd and 4th lines were just"I can't stop thinking now" twice which was a bit meaningless. I really wanted the song to have an optimistic edge and be more about falling in love than out of love so I added the "you" to "I can't stop thinking about... you" in the 4th line
- originally the verse had a 5th line similar in format to the end of verse 3. I cut it for conciseness.
- I'm still playing with the arrangement, but I opted to add a lower harmony to the 2nd line and a doubled higher harmony to the 3rd line where a piano, vibraphone, and accordion all play sparingly (A guitar and upright bass play from the beginning).

Verse 2:
- The 2nd line was originally "Baby, I think I'm made to break" and the 1st line was "Baby, I think it's late". These felt too weak despite their strong connection to the opening of verse 1. Instead, I used a timeworn strategy and changed them to questions which increased their impact.

Verse 3:
The 4th line was originally "I hope you'll see that I'm too blind to be ... " which I changed to "I can't stop that way that I'm the way that I'm". This meant I could use the repeated initial phrase "I can't stop" in both the 1st and 3rd verses making the 2nd line of the 3rd lead coda-like to the extension which is based on the refrain but adding more resolution (back to the tonic D) as well as a new passing chord sequence (Bm - A). I'm also playing with repetition at several levels - I've always been one to avoid repeating phrases but after working out songs like Company in My Back which is filled with repeats, I thought I'd try and borrow some of Mr. Tweedy's techniques - the held out initial words are similarly inspired by the video of "Sunken treasure" which is the initial point of departure for the song.

Getting Better at writing shorter songs

Like many other songwriters, I think I have my favorite song forms that tend to lurk around in the background of my psyche during the songwriting process. For me, in particular, the one I use the most probably can be thought of this way:

(INTRO)
VERSE 1
VERSE 2
REFRAIN
VERSE 3
BRIDGE
REFRAIN

which is a variant on what Sheila Davis calls 'Verse/Chorus/Bridge' except with 2 verses before the initial chorus or refrain. I've noticed that one of my major role models, the Indigo Girls, also tends to use this form a lot, and when I cover some of their songs which are like this ("Galileo", "Least Complicated", "The Wood Song", "World Falls") I find that a variety of techniques that need to be employed for making the song seem too long: sustaining and building energy, providing contrast in the bridge, bringing in different harmony parts and changing the harmonic background rhythm.

This formal archetype tends to produce songs that are in the 4 - 5 minute range and lately I have been looking to write shorter songs for impact and brevity, so I decided to go back and analyze "Getting Better" by The Beatles which has a form like this:

INTRO MOTIF (distinct rhythm pattern + octaves)
VERSE 1
REFRAIN
VERSE 2
REFRAIN
REFRAIN-CHORUS
BRIDGE > VERSE 3 (half verse)
REFRAIN
REFRAIN-CHORUS (repeat 1st chorus line at end)
OUTRO (repeating rhythm pattern of INTRO)

and all this in 2:40 give or take. The REFRAIN and REFRAIN-CHORUS use essentially the same chords and harmonic rhythm but the CHORUS part adds a true CHORUS on the very 1st line.

This is a pretty neat form with lots of subtle tricks (the end of the 1st refrain contains a few measures with the hand claps that foreshadow that great moment before the BRIDGE where the Sitar comes in).